


every last one

by addandsubtract



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Apocalypse, M/M, Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-22
Updated: 2009-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-25 18:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addandsubtract/pseuds/addandsubtract
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a horn displayed in a case in Brad’s living room, on top of the glass coffee table in front of his couch. Nate sees it in his peripheral vision the moment before Brad shoves him back against the door, hands clenched tight in the sleeves of Nate’s long-sleeved t-shirt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	every last one

**Author's Note:**

> pseudo-crossover with american gods, by neil gaiman. thanks to both [](http://denialgreen.livejournal.com/profile)[**denialgreen**](http://denialgreen.livejournal.com/) and [](http://moorfaerie.livejournal.com/profile)[**moorfaerie**](http://moorfaerie.livejournal.com/) for reading this over for me and helping me deal with my own agony over scene order. any remaining confusions/errors/typos are mine and mine alone!

**i.**

There is a horn displayed in a case in Brad’s living room, on top of the glass coffee table in front of his couch. Nate sees it in his peripheral vision the moment before Brad shoves him back against the door, hands clenched tight in the sleeves of Nate’s long-sleeved t-shirt.

Nate has one moment to think of how out of place it looks, settled amid Brad’s laptop and television remote, before Brad cups his chin in one huge hand and says, “Don’t zone on me now, LT.”

Nate leans forward into him, and doesn’t think of it again for a very long while.

  
 **ii.**

In Iraq, Nate paid little attention to how good Brad was. It had always been a fact – Nate graduated from Dartmouth, and Brad is an outstanding marine. Poke called it Brad’s Iceman skills, but Brad just called it being competent.

Nate remembers how easy it was, then. To pretend that the things Brad saw and did were entirely normal. Nate wonders if he should have noticed sooner, but he thinks – no. Brad was careful. He was methodical - _is_ methodical – and Nate knows. He only knows now because Brad wants him to.

  
 **iii.**

Nate hasn’t slept in quite a long while. He remembers readjusting before, remembers how that felt, but he can’t pull himself together in any way that resembles the person he thinks he should be. He’s spent most nights asleep on his kitchen floor, not because he thinks it’s safer, but because it’s the closest he can get to a memorable surface. The concrete floor of the cigarette factory, maybe. The hard-packed sand at Matilda.

Nate’s not in denial. He knows he’s not taking it well. It’s why, when there’s a knock on the door, he almost doesn’t answer it. It’s why, when he looks through the peephole he’s not expecting Brad to be looking back at him. It’s been two and a half months, but Brad doesn’t look any different – his hair is still shorn close to his head; he’s still tall and lean, no extra flesh on him. He looks out of place in his jeans and navy blue t-shirt, but Nate honestly has never seen him out of him uniform.

“What’re you –” Nate starts as he opens the door, but he doesn’t finish. Brad breezes past him into the entranceway, and Nate just rotates to watch him go.

“You’re lost, LT,” Brad says, with a sardonic smile. “I can tell.”

Nate doesn’t remember Brad ever talking like that – he’s not vague, not mysterious. He’s cutting, piling epithets on top of one another until the subject of his tirade feels properly shamed, or enlightened. Ray was often neither, but Nate supposes that Ray is his own specific kind of entity.

“What does that even mean?” Nate asks. He closes the door before he thinks about it. He doesn’t even know if he wants Brad here.

“I’ve been alive a long time, Nate.” Brad voice changes in some way Nate can’t put his finger on. “I know what to look for.”

  
 **iv.**

Brad is sitting up with his feet flat on the floor when Nate wakes. He’s still naked, staring at the palms of his hands. Nate wants to touch his back, the curve of his shoulder blades, the dip of his spine. Instead he pulls himself up and leans against the headboard. Brad turns to look at him, his face solemn.

“When I was younger, my father told me that I’d be the last of us to die.” Brad’s voice is matter of fact, but soft. Nate wonders if Brad’s even looking for a response.

“And? Are you?” Nate watches Brad’s eyes flicker to his mouth as he talks. He’s always liked that, even when he was Brad’s commanding officer.

“I hope so,” Brad says, and stands, stretching. Nate watches, unashamed. “Then I get longer here, with you.”

Nate doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing.

  
 **v.**

“What are you doing here?” Nate asks, following Brad into his own living room. He doesn’t sound scared. He’s surprised, honestly, but maybe that’s what Iraq gave him. One of the few gifts.

Brad smiles, over his shoulder. He looks out of place among Nate’s things. Too tall, too real. Nate doesn’t associate this place with reality. Brad is inspecting his bookshelf, like he can piece together the things he doesn’t know about Nate’s life from the few objects he bothers to keep in his apartment.

“I can hear your heart beating,” Brad says, instead. He grins like a wolf, all sharp teeth and cunning. Nate is very aware, just then, of the way his pulse picks up at Brad words. He sucks in a deep breath, but says nothing. “In Iraq, I listened to men slowly drown in their own blood at a roadblock just outside Al-Hayy. I saw hundreds of pounds of ordinance dropped on nothing at all. I watched you in the firefight like nothing could hit you.” Brad stops, and Nate wonders if maybe Brad’s gone insane. PTSD. Combat stress.

Brad is leafing through a battered copy of Dante’s Inferno, and he says, “I want you.” It’s not what Nate is expecting in the least, though he can’t say he’s surprised, either. “The end is coming soon, and there isn’t any reason I shouldn’t, anymore.”

“The end?” Nate asks. He’s still between Brad and the door. He could probably get away if he wanted to.

“The end of the world,” Brad says. “Ragnarok. What else?”

  
 **vi.**

“I don’t guard the bridge anymore,” Brad tells him. He’s driving, and Nate watches him lean back in his seat. They’re going 95 on 1-90, just about to leave Ohio, and Brad isn’t even putting any effort in. “There’s no one left at Asgard to protect. No reason to bother.”

“So you joined the marines instead?”

Brad snorts. “I’m good at surveillance. It’s much preferable to being deathly bored until the end of time.” He pauses. “If I’d known I’d be stuck with a whiskey-tango Neanderthal like Ray, I probably would’ve reconsidered.”

Nate doesn’t laugh.

“You don’t have to believe me, you know,” Brad says. Then, “There’s traffic at exit 34. Four-car pile up. One woman was killed, her neck snapped, but that’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”

“You could prove it to me,” Nate says. “If you want me to believe you, prove it to me.”

“The problem is that I don’t care if you believe me,” Brad says, and laughs. “You’re here, aren’t you? Don’t try to convince me that you’d be here if you didn’t want to be.”

That’s the really psychotic thing, Nate thinks. He does want to be here. There’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

  
 **vii.**

Nate sleeps in the backseat. It’s somehow easier than sleeping in the bed at his apartment. Brad keeps driving.

“I don’t actually need to sleep,” Brad says when asked. He doesn’t offer more than that, and Nate doesn’t pry. There are a lot of things he hasn’t asked about. Instead, he sleeps. For once, he isn’t troubled by dreams.

  
 **viii.**

“Come with me,” Brad says, sliding Dante’s Inferno back into place. “Stay with me until the end.” There’s an almost vulnerable cant to his shoulders, and Nate could ignore all the crazy talk if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He’s spent most of the past two months sleeping on his kitchen floor. He goes to the grocery store at eleven pm to avoid crowds. He disassembles and reassembles his gun just to make sure he still can. He’s not exactly one to complain.

“Okay,” he says. “Just let me pack.”

  
 **ix.**

“How long have you been alive, exactly?” They’re stopped at some burger joint off the side of the highway in the middle of Colorado. It’s not cold, but the metal picnic table outside is cool against the back of Nate’s thighs.

Brad finishes chewing and says, “A long time,” as if it’s that obvious. As if that’s all Nate wants from him.

“You’re really asking me to believe that you’re some ancient, Nordic guardian god?”

Brad pauses longer this time, resting his arms on his knees. He’s got a napkin on his lap to catch any spilled catsup. Nate has trouble connecting these two pieces of information. “I’m not asking anything,” Brad says. His voice is flat, and Nate doesn’t believe him.

“I’m trying,” Nate says. _I just wish you’d prove it_ , he doesn’t say.

  
 **x.**

Nate spends the afternoon sitting on Brad’s couch, staring at the horn in the case on the coffee table. Brad’s been on the phone since two, and Nate hasn’t bothered to change out of his pajama pants and tank top.

“I know,” Brad says, as he leaves the bedroom. “You’ll hear it. Yes, I _know_ , you overbearing, carrion-eating, goat fucker. Everyone will.” He hangs up without saying goodbye.

Nate’s sitting cross-legged. Part of him wants to ask who was on the phone, but most of him doesn’t want to know. Brad looks him up and down, but doesn’t move any closer.

“It’s called Gjallar,” he says without prompting. “When the horn is sounded, it means the beginning of the end of the world. It’s my job to know; I can see it coming.”

“When?” Nate asks. The sun is steaming in through the windows and beaming down on his shoulders. He’s still not used to the California sunshine. Brad’s staring hard into nothing, but Nate’s seen him do that before. In Iraq, it always meant one more thing the Iceman got right.

“Less than a week,” Brad says. “Not much time left.”

“What if you don’t blow it?” Brad turns to look at him, one eyebrow raised. It’s such a classic Brad expression that Nate would laugh if the subject matter were any less serious.

“Then it doesn’t start, I suppose,” Brad says, like he’s never thought about it. Nate doubts this is the case.

“So don’t,” Nate says. “Let it wait.”

Brad doesn’t respond for so long that Nate almost thinks he’s not going to. He’s looking down at Gjallar, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans. Finally, he says, “I can’t, LT. It would violate protocol, and you know all about supposed insubordination. Odin’s not exactly Encino Man, either.” Brad shrugs. “If I don’t have confidence in my own ability to achieve the objective, what do I have?”

Nate stands and touches the bare skin at the crook of Brad’s arm. Brad looks at him, then, eyes intent on Nate’s face.

Nate says, “You should have gotten me sooner.”

  
 **xi.**

Brad pushes Nate back against the comforter, and Nate doesn’t resist. Brad just looks at him, sprawled on the bed, and doesn’t say anything. Nate’s not sure what he could say. This has been building since they first met.

Brad pulls the tank top up and off, before pinning Nate’s wrists to the mattress. Nate would probably feel exposed, if this was anyone else, but he’s never observed Brad as one to take advantage. Nate can’t imagine he’s ever had to. He licks his lips, and then laughs at the way Brad watches him do it.

“Looking good, LT,” Brad says, and smiles that wolf-smile. Nate pushes his hips up, but doesn’t seriously try to escape. He likes the confident way Brad’s hands hold him down. The way Brad looks at him like he’s something to savor. Brad’s knees are on either side of Nate’s thighs, and Nate can feel the warmth of Brad’s body hovering over him. He’s so real, so human, and Nate wants to palm the back of his head, pull him down until they’re touching everywhere they can. They don’t have nearly enough time.

He can’t remember wanting anything more than he wants this right now.

  
 **xii.**

The horn wakes Nate just after 4 am. Brad isn’t in bed anymore, but the sheets are still warm. Gjallar’s tone is haunting, melancholy. Nate just curls his fingers into the pillowcase and listens.  



End file.
